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Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.
Sep 10, 2025
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.
I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
Shadows cannot see themselves in the mirror of the sun.
The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . .
Our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality.
Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?
There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job.
Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
That's the storyboard that we have in the beginning [of Valerian]. It's an easy shot. It's just a spaceship coming in. That's the first layout. On the first layout, we see the timing of the shot and the speed. It starts to get some shadows, and we see that everything is moving in the back.
I think the challenge for humans remains the same as it has always been: to learn the skills of kindness, compassion, and love. Without these sacred skills, all technology can do is grow the shadows in our lives.
Contrary to Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, I think that today in front of insatiable curiosity of the crowd, we would be better off to remain secret as long as possible, work in the denser part of shadows.
As if the night had said to me, ‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms’ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
I think all Americans need to recognize that, as tragic and horrible as slavery was, as big an economic shadow as it cast, the one thing it didn't do was strip people of their humanity. And I wish that all of us were as strong as the people that walked down those steps and got on those boats.
Making something secret makes it too important, elevates it to the point where it runs your life from the shadows. If you hide what's at your core from other people for too long, sooner or later you end up hiding it from yourself and waking up with no idea of who you are.
A good horse runs with seeing just the shadow of the whip.
Projection [of our own shadow] makes the whole world a replica of our own unknown face.
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
They were jet, those wings, as deep as the sky, as black as Eoduin's hair—no, blacker, for they were dull, unoiled. They gave off no sheen in the light, no gleam to the eye. They drank up the light and diminished it: they were wings of pure shadow.
The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.
Sometimes, photographs live in our hearts as unborn ghosts and we survive not because their shadows find permanence there, but because that thing that is larger than us, larger than the things we can point to, remember and claim, escorts us from dark into light.
Though here at journey's end I lie In darkness buried deep, Beyond all towers strong and high, Beyond all mountains steep, Above all shadows rides the Sun And Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, Nor bid the Stars farewell.
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
A sea captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.
In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.
... I began showing the black border of the negative as part of the image, something I'd never done before. I began to realize that the edge of the negative represents the shadow of the camera, the opaqueness of matter. It casts a shadow on the negative, so it's a photogram as well.
As far Chicago, our city was designed with racism in mind, with neighborhoods segregated by expressways and train tracks. Even suburbs, like Highland Park, have long histories of barring Jewish and black people. That history that has always existed has come out of the shadows because of the social and political climate.
Donald Trump's a bigot without a shadow of a doubt.
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.
I claim to be no more than the average person with less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
We were in the shadow of the mountains, the light was cool and quiet and no wind was stirring. The aspen trunks were slightly greenish and the leaves were a vibrant yellow.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
Fire and Water are archetypes, the split sides of consciousness; one aware, the other, not. The two parts of us that desire synthesis, yet resist it: the self and the shadow. But they are also the element of chance, of the random roll of dice.
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
White is the color of decomposition. White is also no color. White is nothing. In photography, the paper is white, next comes the light, which is also white, then the shadow is created, the apparition.
You can't anticipate history. It's only when you look back you see what the Romans did, and what various other empires did, what the British Empire did. We're now beginning to see the long shadow that it created, so one must be hopeful and say that what's going on in Asia, that what's going on in the Middle East, that all these various areas of conflict, that they will pass and move onto another area. But it would seem that the natural order of things is there is this cyclic behavior of destruction followed by a calm period.
I have always been afraid... Always been pretending to follow you closely, alwyas been pretending to sharpen my teeth, when the truth is, I am ... scared to death just treading on your shadow.
To see life. To see the world. To watch the faces of the poor, and the gestures of the proud. To see strange things. Machines, armies, multitudes, and shadows in the jungle. To see, and to take pleasure in seeing. To see and be instructed. To see and be amazed. (Describing the powers of photography; written for the launch of LIFE Magazine, 1936.)
Our first duty to liberty is to keep our own. But it is also our duty - as Europeans - to keep alive in the Eastern as well as the Western half of our continent those ideas of human dignity which Europe gave to the world. Let us therefore resolve to keep the lamps of freedom burning bright so that all who look to the West from the shadows of the East need not doubt that we remain true to those human and spiritual values that lie at the heart of European civilization.
There is no joy other than the joy of creating. There is no man who is truly alive other than one who is creating. All others are just shadows on the earth with nothing to do with being alive. The joy of living, whether it is love or action, is the joy of creating.
I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing.
The Iraq War has thrown such a heavy shadow on Afghanistan that you can't hardly get any news about that now. I went to Afghanistan this year and spent more time there than I did in Iraq ... just 'cause they were forgotten about, and I wanted them to know that I appreciated it.
I believe our task is to develop a moral and aesthetic imagination deep enough and wide enough to encompass the contradictions of our time and history, the tremendous loss and tragedy as well as greatness and nobility, an imagination capable of recognizing that where there is light there is shadow, that out of hubris and fall can come moral regeneration, out of suffering and death, resurrection and rebirth.
There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no longer make out the words and my mind began to wander, and how secure have I felt seated at the desk in my house in the dark night, just watching the tip of my pencil in the lamplight following its shadow, as if of its own accord and with perfect fidelity, while that shadow moved regularly from left to right, line by line, over the ruled paper.
Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.